10 BOB WHITE AND OTHER QUAILS OF UNITED STATES. 



tion, colonies have been introduced and found to thrive in various 

 localities in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, California, Ore- 

 gon, Washington, and the island of Jamaica. South of the home of 

 the typical bird, just outlined, bobwhites have a wide range, occupy- 

 ing Florida, western and southern Texas, Cuba, and a large part of 

 Mexico, and extending even beyond the border of Guatemala. Owing 

 chiefly to climatic influences the southern birds differ more or less 

 from the northern ones. The masked bobwhite {Colinus ridgwayi) , 

 a closely related but separate species, once lived in extreme southern 

 Arizona and the adjoining part of Sonora, but now it is xarobably 

 extinct within our borders. With this exception all of the bobwhites 

 from Canada to Guatemala and Cuba, according to E. W. Nelson, 

 belong to a single species modified by environment into a consider- 

 able number of forms, some of which are strikingly different from 

 the birds of the United States. The Florida bobwhite, which is 

 peculiar to the peninsula of Florida, is smaller and darker than the 

 northern bird. The Texas bobwhite of western Texas and north- 

 eastern Mexico is about the same size as the northern one, but is paler 

 and has a light rufous collar below the black band and bordering the 

 white throat patch. The Salvin bobwhite from the southern border 

 of Mexico is very unlike the common bird of the United States, most 

 of the head, neck, and breast being plain black and the rest of the 

 underparts plain rufous. 



The present account is limited to the bobwhites of the United 

 States, including the Texas and Florida forms. The writer's field 

 work in this connection has been principally in New Jersey, Vir- 

 ginia, and Maryland — on a farm at Marshall Hall, Md., which is 

 directly across the Potomac from Mount Vernon. 



CALL NOTES. 



In the field the nuptial call note of the cockbird is an infallible 

 guide to its identity. This familiar challenge, sounding to the 

 sportsman like ' boh white,'' ' hob -bob -white,'' and to the farmer like 

 ' more wet ' or ' no more wet' is by no means the only note of the 

 species during the breeding season. It was the good fortune of the 

 writer during the last week of June, 1902, to hear the nesting note 

 and other calls. Again and again the cock left his distant perch, 

 where he had been whistling ' bob white,' and, still calling, ap- 

 proached the nest on the bank of a little sluggish briery run between 

 open fields. When within 50 yards of his mate he uttered the rally 

 note, so thrilling to "the sportsman in the fall, ^ ka-loi-kee,' which 

 the hen often answered with a single clear whistle. Then followed 

 s series of queer responsive ' caterwaulings,' more unbirdlike than 

 those of the yellow-breasted chat, suggesting now the call of a cat to 



